Tag Archives: Albert Einstein

I’m fascinated by cosmology and quantum physics. Although I don’t speak enough math to truly follow the science, I ran across a post that actually gives me an intuitive feel for Dark Energy – the almost mystical stuff that makes up a large part of the universe if we accept measurements of mass density wave-patterns. This post has tons of views – leave a comment – what do you think? Here’s the proposition”

Relativistic effects explain the observations evidencing the existence of Dark Matter around galaxies and galaxy clusters. When energy passes closer to galaxies it “slows down” due to gravitational time dilations.

The accumulative effect is a substantial increase in energy density when seen… far from the center of galaxies and that… is imperceptible for an observer within the galaxy. Gregorio Baquero

Visit Baquero to see the math, or just to read his narrative. He concludes:

There is no need for particularly special particles forming Dark Matter substance or even parallel universes’ escaped gravity to account for the extra gravity existing around cosmic structures. In a way, Dark Matter is just traveling energy.

I can get that – it makes sense to me. The speed of light is constant but the shape of space varies with mass. Gravity is the shape of space, thanks to energy interactions.

He doesn’t post his credentials or name collegeues, and I’m not competent to judge the math, but I admit I’m emotionally draw to Baquero‘s concluding sentence, which I paraphrased to title this post. Einstein hasn’t been left behind by quantum physics – not yet.

There is evidence for dark matter. Weak gravitational lensing data from the Hubble Space Telescope imply this distribution of dark matter.

You and I are special
Along with all we view,
Just one in five of all that is
From this stellar clue.

The galaxy of the Milky Way,
Rotating fast, should scatter.
Based on the mass of stars we see
There must be hidden matter.

For decades we’ve accepted
This mystery profound.
It’s central to the notions
That cosmologists expound.

But data’s always coming in
As telescopes get better,
Till movements of the stars
Are described by normal matter.

Perhaps it’s relativity
That we don’t comprehend.
The shape of space and gravity
Were never quantum’s friend.

So what’s the answer when
Disagreement is so keen?
Why, get more data till we know.
God’s subtle but not mean.

by Kate Rauner

Christian Moni-Bidin, an astronomer at the University of Concepción in Chile, and his coauthors have a forthcoming paper in the Astrophysical Journal. Based on the hundreds of stars, all within 13,000 light-years of Earth, visible material explains their motion. Unseen dark matter isn’t needed, at least not this close to Earth.

The next step is to replicate the calculations for millions of stars. If dark matter really doesn’t exists, then gravity is messier than either Newton or Einstein realized.

Thanks to Albert Einstein for the quote in that last line, and to livescience.com for their article.

Over a billion years ago, two black holes that had been orbiting each other smashed together. Ripples in space-time from the collision reached Earth. Specifically, the waves reached a pair of giant interferometers in the United States, located in Louisiana and Washington state.

Scientists have for the first time detected gravitational waves, ripples in space and time hypothesized by Albert Einstein a century ago, in a landmark discovery announced on Thursday that opens a new window for studying the cosmos…

The colliding black holes that produced these gravitational waves created a violent storm in the fabric of space and time, a storm in which time speeded up, and slowed down, and speeded up again, a storm in which the shape of space was bent in this way and that way.

I’m no physicist, but I find it easier to picture gravity as a warping or reshaping of space and time, not a fog of quantum particles. Transmogrified to an audio signal, something a person can experience, black holes go whoop.

I’ve read that Einstein’s work has been overwhelmed by quantum mechanics. Even, if you view PhDs as the children of their advisors, that Einstein’s line has gone extinct. So in addition to wondering what new view we’ll have of the universe by looking at gravity waves, I feel good about this discovery.

This is probably not good news for anyone’s grand unified theory of everything. Gravity remains different from the other fundamental forces of electromagnetism, weak nuclear, and strong nuclear. Nature refuses to settle into a neat, tidy human understanding.

How frustrating, how problematic, how infuriating. How awesome.

Thanks to reuters for the quotations above. Many outlets covered the news.

All my books, including collections of my science-inspired poetry, are available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, iTunes, Kobo, and other major online retailers. You’ll also find paperbacks at Create Space and all major digital formats at Smashwords. Read one today.

Bosons carry force
Among the fermions
Flying back and forth –
Colliding with the masses.
All these interactions
Exchanging many photons
Exceed our calculations –
The math beyond our grasp.
A million million histories
Are not enough to tell
The pathways are a mystery –
Too many to envision.
When all the paths are added
Results become absurd
Infinity of masses –
Of minuses and pluses.
Infinities that run to right
Infinities to left
Yield answers that are finite –
Renormalized at last.
From these results we can’t predict
The math seems somewhat dubious
But once electrons are fixed –
The method is a triumph.
Weak nuclear combines
With electromagnetism
But strong nuclear we find
Evades with gravity.
Strong nuclear is parallel
A similar approach
But gravity is physics hell
Somewhere Einstein chuckles.

I’ve read many attempts to explain quantum physics without the mathematics. I’m currently reading The Grand Designby Hawkings and Mlodinow and I like it a lot. The tone is casual, the diagrams helpful, and the many cartoons are a lighthearted touch. If you’re a non-physicist, read this book, even if you’ve read other explanations. Remember Richard Feynman once wrote “nobody understands quantum mechanics.” But it has never failed a test, and if all that testing says it’s so, then it is so. The quantum world exists outside our intuitive, common-sense experience, so forget all that and follow the proof.